Andrés Bernasconi

Andrés Bernasconi is a professor of higher education at the Center for the Study of Educational Policy and Practice of the School of Education of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Previously he was provost at Universidad Andrés Bello, also in Chile. In his career as an administrator he has served as institutional researcher, dean, and vice-president for research. A lawyer by training, he holds a master of public policy (Harvard University) and a Ph.D. in sociology of organizations (Boston University). His research is international comparative in scope and focuses on the academic profession, regulatory issues in higher education, and university leadership.

Most Recent Articles

In typical Latin American fashion, university leaders in this part of the world shoot the messenger, suspect global conspiracy, and seek refuge in an idiosyncratic parallel universe: a group met in Mexico in May, backed by UNESCO, to denounce the global rankings as invalid measurements of quality, decry the “Anglo Saxon” bias in them, and proclaim that given than universities in this part of the world are different, rankings should be designed that reflect the “social” mission of universities in Latin America, an elusive concept to name what universities supposedly do in here that is not research, or teaching, or transfer of research results, or indeed any of the functions associated with the university as an institution elsewhere in the world.

Last year’s student protests in Chile had as one of its main targets the pursuit of profit in education. The argument defended by demonstrators and shared, according to opinion polls, by a large majority of Chileans, was that financial gain from education is morally illegitimate and ought to be legally banned. Most people seemed to believe that education cannot be, under any circumstances, a business enterprise.

Chile’s Ministry of Education has launched a web portal offering with unprecedented detail employment and earnings data to prospective applicants to higher education. The portal, called “Mi futuro” is a searchable database that lists hundreds of degree programs, professional and technical, from Medicine to Auto Mechanic, displaying for each program of every institution of higher education in the country the following information: drop-out rate, average time to degree, average earnings of the graduates after 4 years of graduation, current tuition fees for the program, and accreditation status of the program.

At times of increasing entrepreneurialism in universities, when budget pressures drive higher education administrators to press professors to think and act more like business executives, it may be of some use to remind ourselves of the various ways in which the vocation and career path of the academic depart from those of the business executive.

A new government was inaugurated in Chile in March 2010. The incoming administration, headed by President Sebastián Piñera, is the first right-of-center government since the re-establishment of democracy in 1990. It arrives in the wake of four consecutive left-of-center governments held by the political parties grouped in the Concertación alliance, one of the most successful coalitions in Chile’s political history, which remained 20 years in power.